


A very special star

by smkkbert



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, inspired by a documentation, olicity angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smkkbert/pseuds/smkkbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity has to tell her kids something she feels unable to say. To her surprise her eight-year-old daughter Emmy finds the words Felicity was lacking to tell little Tommy about the changes in their life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A very special star

She looked down to her hands that were no longer covered with blood now. She had taken a shower to wash the dried blood out of her hair and from her hands and her face and wherever else it had stuck to her. She had watched the red fluid mixing with the stream of water from the shower and disappearing into the drain. And the sight had her only made cry more. She had kept her hands in front of her lips to muffle her sobs, so they had been almost inaudible.  
Something about the picture of the blood being washed off of her still kept her captured. It was like she couldn’t get the image out of her head, no matter how many hours ago her shower was already.

Leaning against the wall next to her daughter’s room, Felicity took some deep breaths. She had cried so much already that she had hoped that there were no tears left to be cried anymore, but listening to her children’s unburdened voices made her eyes prickle with tears and a lump form in her throat again. The kids weren’t supposed to experience such a grief at such a young age. They weren’t supposed to experience it at any age actually. She just didn’t want that for her children.

“Emmy, do you read me a story?” Felicity heard little Tommy asking his older sister. They were often sleeping together in one room although Tommy had his own nursery. They loved sharing a bed although or maybe because they didn’t get much sleep then.

The kids had always been close to one another. From the second Emmy had known that she was going to be a big sister, she had loved the little human being that had grown in her mother’s womb. And over the following years her love for Tommy had only increased. Now that she could read long texts fluently, the eight-year-old loved helping to put her little brother to bed by reading him a bedtime story. The three-year-old was a little whirlwind, barely ever coming to rest, no matter how many rounds they make him run around the house to tire him out. But something about his sister’s voice always made him calm down.

Emmy was certainly one the best things that had ever happened to Felicity, she thought, especially now that she was going to be a single parent.

When she felt a sob forming in her throat, Felicity hastily put her hands over of her lips. Her legs started shaking and refused to carry her any longer. They had given in more than once today already, so Felicity was almost used to the feeling. Gathering the little strength she had left in her body, she let herself sink to the floor, burying her face in her hands and starting crying once more, staying as quiet as possible, so the kids wouldn’t hear her.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand what had happened and how that had happened and how she had been led to this moment. She didn’t understand it now and she didn’t feel like she ever would understand.

And if she didn’t understand this then how was she supposed to explain this to her children? How were they supposed to understand what even she herself didn’t get?

This morning everything had been so great. Everything had been like it had always been. She had woken up to his gentle kiss to her shoulder with his stubble scratching her sensitive skin gently like she always did. And she had eaten the pancakes he had made for breakfast like she always did while they had talked about the holiday party they had been planning for the weekend. And she had called him when she had had lunch in her office like she always did, asking if everything was going alright at home like she always did. Later they had met in the lair like they always did. But she hadn’t come home with him like she always did.

Somewhere between meeting him in the lair and coming home together something had gone completely out of control and everything had gone wrong and eventually fallen apart.

Felicity took a deep breath. She needed to get the panicked voices she had heard over the comms out of her head, needed to forget the panic she had felt herself when she had sat in the lair, being forced to listen to the voices and noises helplessly, unable to do anything but listen. She needed to expel the pictures of the others’ return to the lair from her memory. But the voices and pictures seemed to be burned into her mind already, every detail of the memories only one thoughtless second away.

Laurel had entered the lair first, holding an arm wrapped around a crying Thea. As soon as the younger one had seen her sister-in-law she had ran to her and thrown herself at her, sobbing against the crook of her neck while Laurel had watched from afar with quiet tears streaming down her face and insecure gazes in Felicity’s direction.

Felicity had stood there numbly. She hadn’t been able to do anything or even feel anything. Because even though she had heard over the comms what had happened and had seen it in Thea’s and Laurel’s behavior, her brain and heart hadn’t been able to process the information and form the right and only possible conclusion. Rationally she had known what had happened, but she hadn’t been able to fully understand it and because of that she hadn’t been able to do or feel anything. So in this moment of uncertainty she had found herself unable to move to even wrap an arm around her sister-in-law. All she had done was standing still with her eyes focused on the entrance, hoping that if she just didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t do anything at all, time would stand still and her worst fear wouldn’t be proved true.

But time hadn’t stopped. It hadn’t stood still.  
And her worst fear had been proved true.

The memory of John entering the liar, carrying Oliver over his shoulder like he had done after she had drugged him in Nanda Parbat all those years ago would haunt Felicity for the rest of her life.  John’s eyes had been filled with tears and they had shown guilt when he had looked at her. He had laid Oliver on the med table and only then he had allowed himself letting the first tears fall from his eyes. Felicity hadn’t seen him crying often and something about the sight of her best friend crying silent tears of grief had made something click inside of her.

Slowly, still feeling numb, she had taken a step to the side, making Thea loosen the hold she had had on her. And even more slowly she had stepped to the med table. John had made room for her immediately, giving her free sight of Oliver. When she had stood right in front of the table, she had started reaching out her hand to touch him, but she had pulled it back before the tips of her fingers had made contact with his skin.

Instead she had just stared at him.

Him. It had sounded wrong then and somehow it still sounded wrong now. Because the body John had brought with him from the field hadn’t looked like Oliver. Not really.

His suit had been soaked with blood. Even on the dark green fabric she had been able to see the dark blood stains on his jacket. His face had been wounded, the left side covered by a giant scratch. Blood had come from his nose and his mouth, already partly dried on the skin of his face. His eyes had been closed.  
But what had bothered Felicity most about the sight of Oliver had been the motionlessness of his body. Even when he was asleep or unconscious, there had always been the more or less even rising and falling of his chest with every breath. But that hadn’t been there.

Her hands had shaken uncontrollably when she had reached out her hand for his body again. And like she had done so often, she had put her hand to his chest, right above his heart. And for the first time she hadn’t felt the beating of his heart underneath her palm. All she had felt had been his blood. It had stuck to the palm of her hands.

And that had been the moment when the first glimpse of realization had settled in. Her eyes had filled with tears when she had screamed in pain, a pain that had felt weirdly physical given that she hadn’t been physically wounded or anything. Her legs had given in and just in time before she would have hit the floor, John had put his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. Together they had sunk to the floor and John had held her and wrapped himself around her protectively while she had cried and screamed and punched him over and over again without ever really hurting him.

Most of the things that had happened after that were a blur. She had been too deep into her pain and grief to hear much of what John and Laurel and finally Lyla and Captain Lance when they had joined them had discussed. Later Laurel had taken Thea home and John had taken care of Felicity. She hadn’t wanted to leave. She had wanted to stay with Oliver, but John had reminded her of Emmy and Tommy and that the nanny couldn’t stay all night.

“Besides, they need their mother home,” John had said. “And you need them with you.”

Somehow John and Lyla had managed to take care that nobody would see Felicity with all the blood on her. The nanny had been sent home already, the kids upstairs playing. So Felicity had been able to take a shower and when she had finished, the kids had already finished dinner and been upstairs playing again. John and Lyla had stayed a little more with Felicity, but she had wanted to be alone, so John had put the kids to bed – they loved their Uncle John, so there had been no questions asked when he had put them to bed instead of mommy or daddy – and then they had left, so Felicity had had time to sit in the dark and try to process everything. The kids hadn’t come back downstairs since, but Felicity wasn’t surprised that they were still awake. That short before Christmas they were too excited to sleep most of the time.

While Felicity had tried without success to process the latest happenings, John and Captain Lance had taken care that Oliver’s body had been found in some civil clothes to make it look like a normal mugging as far as mugging could ever be described as normal. Oliver had been dropped in a cold alley in the Glades where he had been found after an anonymous hint from Diggle to the police. Lance had then insisted to come here alone and tell her since he was her mother’s boyfriend and had an emotional relationship to her. It had only been a short visit. She had asked him to leave, so she could tell the kids. She had had to wait until she had been officially told about Oliver’s… about what had happened before she could tell them.  
All of this was macabre and Felicity’s stomach cramped painfully even thinking about it, but she knew in the back of her mind that there had been no other way. If they wanted to legally bury Oliver, it had had to be done.

Wanted to legally bury Oliver, Felicity repeated in her mind. She didn’t want to bury her husband at all. She wanted him here. With her. But it wasn’t possible. She wouldn’t get him back. So if she had to bury him, then she didn’t want to do it in secret.

She wiped some tears from her cheeks and tried to take in deep breaths. She needed to pull herself together. She couldn’t go into their children’s nursery like that. Not when she was screwed up like that. They would be scared before she had said any of the words that they needed to hear from her.

But how was she going to tell them?

How did you tell your little children that their father was never coming home again? That he was never reading them a bed time story again? Never cook them breakfast again? Never cuddle with them again? Never tell them he loved them again? Wasn’t going to walk Emmeline down the aisle like she has been playing for years already? Wasn’t going to be there for Tommy’s first day in pre-pre-school like he had promised the little boy?

Everyone had offered to help her tell them and everyone had offered to stay here for the night or however long she needed it. But Felicity had refused. She needed to do this herself. And she needed some time alone with her children. She needed to find a way to deal with this insanity for the sake of her children. Their children. If they wouldn’t be here, if they wouldn’t have any children, she would fall into a dark hole and never crawl out of it.

But she had children and just like she had always told Oliver that if anything would ever happen to her, he had to get through his grief and continue to be a great father, she knew that he would expect the same from her.

She needed to tell the children, so all three of them could grieve together. The sooner they knew, the better.

Felicity took in another deep breath, moving the palms of her hands over her cheeks to make sure there were no more tears. She hadn’t put on any make-up after her shower, knowing that it was going to end smeared in a tissue anyway. Her eyes were probably red and her skin pale, but as long as there weren’t any tears to be seen, her children might not be too worried when they saw her.

Taking in one last deep breath, she opened the door to find that her kids had crawled under a blanket together, a flashlight switched on, so Emmy could read out a book for Tommy without anyone seeing the light from the outside of the room. Felicity didn’t need to say anything or switch on the light for them to notice that she was there and they had been caught not sleeping in the middle of the night, though.

“Oh-oh,” Emmy made. “Mommy’s here.”

“Pssst,” Tommy hushed his older sister. “She can’t see us.”

“Tommy, she can hear us. And I am sure that she can see us.”

Felicity chuckled half-heartedly. The sound surprised her. She hadn’t thought that she’d been able to do that. And she felt guilty. She wasn’t supposed to chuckle. Not after what had happened tonight.

Gulping down the lump in her throat, she stepped closer to the bed and pulled the blanket off her children. Emmy sat on the mattress cross legged, Tommy on her legs with his back resting against her chest, so he could look into the book she was reading for him. Although he was very much awake, he still wore his baby sleeping bag. They always put it on backwards, so Tommy wouldn’t take it off and get up every few minutes. Sleeping wasn’t exactly the boy’s favorite activity of the day or the night.

“Hi, mommy,” Tommy said, crawling away from his sister and onto his mother’s lap. “You look tired.”

Don’t cry, Felicity warned herself over and over again when she felt the familiar burning in her throat. Don’t cry.

But before she could say anything, Tommy looked to the door and asked, “Where’s daddy? Is he talking to Santa again?”

The corners of Felicity’s lips switched slightly. Whenever Oliver had needed more time in the liar lately, Felicity had told Tommy that his father needed to talk to Santa to make sure Emmy and Tommy both got the presents they wanted for Christmas. With Oliver’s excitement for the holidays that little story had made sense. Emmy had always smiled knowingly. She knew there was no Santa who brought the presents and she also knew that Oliver was Green Arrow since she had been abducted last year and Oliver had come to save her.

She probably knew much more than what was good for her because just like Felicity, mysteries bugged her, so she spent a lot of time with investigational work.

“Daddy is-“

Felicity’s voice broke. She had thought that if she got the words out quickly, her mind wouldn’t catch up that soon and maybe she’d be lucky, so she could betray her body and tell her kids what had happened before her body even registered. But she had known in the back of her mind that that was impossible because her body was well aware of the pain and it wasn’t exactly fair to her children to break the news quickly to make it easier for herself, either.

Easier. Like any of this was easy.

“Mommy?” Tommy asked, putting his little hand to her cheek. “Don’t cry.”

But once again Felicity felt helpless. The tears were already streaming down her face. So she wrapped her one arm around Tommy, cradling him to her chest and reached the other one out for Emmy. The girl crawled over the mattress and snuggled up to her mother’s chest, wrapping one arm around Felicity’s back and put the hand of the other arm to Felicity’s hand on Tommy’s back.

“Listen,” Felicity said, still cradling her children to her chest protectively. “There is something I need to tell you. Daddy is-“

But again her voice broke. Another sob escaped her lips. More tears streamed down her face.

Felicity couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t.  
But she had to. She knew that she had to.  
But how was she going to do that if she couldn’t get the words out?

She lowered her nose to her son’s head and breathed him in, all the time stroking over her daughter’s blond curls. They were kids, still so innocent. Life had spared them most of the pain a kid could feel. And Felicity felt like she was destroying their childhood if she told them the truth. She didn’t want to tell them that their father had been ripped out of their lives.

When she heard a zipper being pulled down, Felicity opened her eyes to see that Emmy was opening her brother’s sleeping bag. Questioningly she looked at her daughter, but the eight-year-old was avoiding her mother’s gaze. Instead she was focused on helping Tommy out of the sleeping bag.

“Come on, Tommy,” she then said, sliding out of the bed and holding out a hand for her brother to take. “I’ll show you something.”

Felicity hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks even though new ones were coming already. They wouldn’t stop falling although she desperately prayed for them to stop in her mind. They needed to stop. She needed to tell her children.

“Emmy, wait, I need to tell you something,” Felicity said, but Emmy and Tommy were already at the door. The eight-year-old stopped shortly to look back at her mother with sad eyes.

“It’s okay, mom. I know.”

Felicity’s heart skipped at least three beats before it started racing in her chest, pounding all too firmly against her ribs.  
What did Emmy know? Whatever she knew it couldn’t be what Felicity feared she could know. She couldn’t know _it_. How could she?

She interrupted her crying and her wild thoughts to get up from the bed and follow her children. Emmy had taken Tommy to the balcony that was attached to their parents’ bedroom. Felicity didn’t dare to look at the bed when she passed it. She couldn’t allow herself to think about the fact that she had to sleep there on her own for the rest of her life. She pushed the thought away before it could make her cry anymore.

“Emmy, Tommy, I really need to talk to you. It is important,” Felicity explained.

Emmy only looked at her mother once more. She looked sad, sadder than Felicity had ever seen her.

“Tommy,” the young girl said with her soft voice, going down onto her knees, so she was on her brother’s eyelevel. “Daddy is a star now.”

The lump that had formed in Felicity’s throat grew, her throat feeling tighter than before and breathing became hard. Emmy knew. She knew it.  
And she didn’t only know it, she was also telling her little brother about it, something Felicity had been unable to do.

“A star?” Tommy asked, looking into the sky where a thousand stars enlightened the night.

“A very special star,” Emmy told with a nod of her head.

Felicity’s and her daughter’s gazes met over Tommy’s head while the little boy was still looking into the sky. For a long time nobody said anything. They stood in the cold air of the night, Tommy looking to the stars, Felicity and Emmeline looking at each other.

“How did you-?” Felicity started in a whisper, but wasn’t able to complete the sentence since new tears were forming in her eyes already.

“I saw you crying in Uncle John’s arms,” the girl answered just as quietly. “And I knew.”

Felicity wanted to apologize. She wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been supposed to learn like that. Felicity had been supposed to tell them. Because she was their mother and terrible news like these needed to be told to little children like them by their mother.  
But Felicity felt herself unable to talk or even to move. She could just stand there in the door between the balcony and the bedroom and watch their children holding each other.

“Why is he a star, Emmy?” Tommy asked.

“Because he had to leave us,” Emmy answered, smiling down to her brother sadly. “He didn’t want to leave, but he wasn’t allowed to stay here. So he decided that he would become a star. Wanna know why?”

The little boy nodded, his blue eyes, the ones that looked to hundred percent like Oliver’s, turning from the sky to his sister’s face with a questioning gaze.

“It’s because from the sky he can watch us. He can always keep an eye on us and protect us,” Emmy answered. She pulled her little brother a little closer and pointed at the sky. “You see that?”

Tommy and Felicity both followed the direction of Emmy’s index finger with their eyes. Between all the stars in the dark night sky they could see a shooting star. During the last meteor shower when Oliver had wanted to camp in the garden with the kids, Tommy had fallen sick only a day before, so seeing his first shooting star had had to wait.

“A shooting star,” Tommy said.

It was the first time Tommy had ever seen a real shooting star. He had seen pictures in a book, but never seen a real one.

“A shooting star means that daddy winks at us,” Emmeline explained and looked at her mother, tears now streaming down the girl’s face, too. “Right, mommy?”

Felicity smiled through her tears and gave their children a short nod, breathing a barely audible “Right.”

When she was sure that her legs were finally able to move again, she took two large steps forward and put her arms around her children, so she could press them to her and hold them tightly.

All three of them were crying now. Felicity cried because she had lost her husband. Emmy cried because she had lost her father. And although Tommy hadn’t fully understood the consequences of his father being a star now, he cried, too, because if his sister and his mother were crying, then there had to be a reason to cry.

When Felicity looked up into the sky once more, finding comfort in her daughter’s words, she saw another shooting star and closed her eyes.

Maybe Emmy was right.

Maybe Oliver was looking down to them and wink at them every once in a while.  
The thought offered little comfort in the dark of the night and the dark of her heart, but it did offer comfort. Just not as much as having her children here did.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a documentation about the widows of Starfighter-pilots that I watched some weeks ago. One widow told about how her eight-year-old boy insisted on telling his three-year-old brother that their father had died. And he told him that their father was a star now.  
> And this grew out of it.


End file.
